I installed the Nvidia Photoshop plugin to generare normal maps from textures. I think this is quicker and simpler than model an hi-res mesh, and I'd really like to go this way.
I found a lot of guides and tutorials about generating a normal map from hi-res models, but I want to have a realtime normal map picked from a texture image.

Could anyone give some advice about how to build such a shader?
I found this (http://i5.pbase.com/u19/skyphyr/large/13267141.normalmaphowto.jpg), which is pretty what I want... but I need realtime!

Many thanks in advance!

Waz

01-04-2007, 08:13 PM

Easy way to get a realtime normal map preview is apply a Ultimapper property, and under Preview Shader Tree select what display type you want OpenGL or DirectX, and what card you have and hit Create Preview. Then open up your Render Tree for that object and replace the images with ones of your choice.

francescaurbinati

01-05-2007, 02:16 PM

Many thanks, Waz!
I tried what you said but I got weird result with artifacts.
I have a GeForce 2 MX 440 (new hardware will come in days) and I can guess It's not enough to support real time normal mapping preview.

Also, I watched a video tutorial and I think some of my meshes actually need hi-res version to generate normal maps. While a normal map for a trunk may be achieved in Photoshop from a trunk texture, this process can't cover all my needs.

I'm gonna try ultimapper preview again after upgrading my graphic card, and use Zbrush to achieve hi-res meshes in short time.

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